Deeplinks Blog posts about Search Incident to Arrest

In May, we asked EFF members to write their California legislators and urge them to support SB 914, a bill that requires the police to obtain a search warrant before searching a recent arrestee’s cell phone.

EFF is happy to report that yesterday, the California Senate passed SB 914 with a bipartisan vote of 31-4. SB 914 already passed in the California Assembly in August on a 28-9 bipartisan vote, and is now on its way to Governor Brown's desk.

EFF activist Eva Galperin interviews EFF criminal defense attorney, Hanni Fakhoury, on the newest edition of Line Noise, the EFF podcast. Whether law enforcement wants to search your home computer, tries to browse through your smart phone at a traffic stop, or seeks to thumb through your camera at customs, you should know your rights.

Think you know what to do when law enforcement seeks access to your digital device? Test your skills with our online quiz. Then brush up on your knowledge with our Know Your Rights whitepaper.

We also highly recommend you print our one-page guide explaining what to do when the police ask for access to your device. Leave it by your workstation, tape it up in your server room, and slip a copy into your laptop case—anywhere you have sensitive information on a digital device.

Our cell phones aren't just for calls anymore. They hold our address books, our calendars, our emails, and our grocery lists. They may even include things like a list of questions to ask your doctor, pictures of your girlfriend, or URLs of web sites you've visited. When can police search your phone and look at all this information?

That's the question that EFF is asking a court in California to consider. Police in Daly City, California seized a suspect's iPhone during his arrest. Hours later, investigators bypassed the password and searched through the data on the device without a search warrant. After the officers realized that the information was too extensive to write down, they finally obtained a warrant to search the phone.